Why there will never be a Muslim "Gorbachev"

And Gorbachev remains a dangerous voice. He may enjoy hanging out with Ted Turner the same way Stalin enjoyed hobnobbing with Walter Duranty, but Gorbachev is still a mouthpiece for an ideology making a stealthy comeback in Russia. "I think the United States is sick," Gorbachev recently stated. "It suffers from the sickness, the disease of being the victor, and it needs to cure itself from this disease." The cure would presumably involve allowing Iran to gain nuclear weapons, pulling out of Iraq and worrying a lot less about the rise of a thinly concealed fascistic tendency in Russia.

Gorbachev's recent bout of honesty should remind us that we cannot rely on the kindness of our enemies to protect us from danger. The world has grown more dangerous since the fall of the Soviet Union, not less. The Soviets attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II for his support of Poland's Solidarity movement during the Cold War. Today, Muslims destroy churches, kill nuns and call for the beheading of Pope Benedict XVI after he quotes a 14th-century Byzantine emperor. The Soviets built an enormous nuclear arsenal, but could be deterred. Iran cannot be trusted to act rationally with weapons of such power.

There are those who urge us to wait for the Muslim Gorbachev. We hear constantly that if we simply wait long enough -- and work hard not to offend Muslims -- the moderate Muslim majority will take back Islam from its radicals. Leaving aside the question of whether such a moderate majority actually exists, we must recognize that no such Muslim Gorbachev is in sight; we must recognize that even Gorbachev was not a Gorbachev. Our enemies lose because we force them to fail, not because they choose to lose.